Obtaining trustworthy information from online sources has been a problem since the early days of the Internet. Information about individuals in particular is suspect because some individuals have bad motives, including individuals who impersonate other real or imaginary individuals. For example, an individual may enter, into an online electronic form, information about the individual or another that is completely fabricated. Not only is it difficult for online entities to obtain trustworthy information, doing so in a secure manner is difficult to ensure. For example, an individual might enter, into a text field, code that, when executed, causes an online entity's server to perform an illegal operation or to fail. Improvements in obtaining trustworthy and secure information over a computer network are needed.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.